HyperMeeting

Asynchronous/synchronous collaboration tool

Meetings are an important part of workplace collaboration. People prefer face-to-face meetings, but when this is not possible, they use remote collaboration tools like video conferencing. However, when people are in different time zones or are traveling, finding a meeting time that is convenient for everyone is sometimes impossible.

HyperMeeting allows users to asynchronously participate in meetings by viewing a recording of a previous meeting and adding comments to the meeting with hyperlinked video. HyperMeeting records video from multiple videoconference attendees and indexes content by speaker and topic. During subsequent meetings, new attendees can view this video and add new video clips of discussions of topics in the previous meeting or entirely new topics. Topic discussions are linked to the previous meeting at the time that topic was discussed, so that the resulting series of meetings forms a single HyperMeeting. HyperMeeting video can be viewed in different ways, similar to the hypertext links on a Web page. Our novel concept of a playback plan generates a personalized summary of the sequence of meetings based on topics and meeting participation. In this way, the HyperMeeting system allows people to participate in meetings asynchronously and to view a summary of meeting topics over multiple meetings, as if they were topics in a single meeting with all people attending at the same time.

The HyperMeeting user interface for watching and continuing meeting runs in web browsers that support WebRTC for video conferencing. The player offers synchronous playback of video streams recorded in previous meetings. The list of meetings, attendees, and topics are shown on the left of the player. At the top is the bank of video players for the individual video streams that make up the hypermeeting. Below these are the timelines for all meetings.

Abstract

We previously created the HyperMeeting system to support a chain of geographically and temporally distributed meetings in the form of a hypervideo. This paper focuses on playback plans that guide users through the recorded meeting content by automatically following available hyperlinks. Our system generates playback plans based on users' interests or prior meeting attendance and presents a dialog that lets users select the most appropriate plan. Prior experience with playback plans revealed users' confusion with automatic link following within a sequence of meetings. To address this issue, we designed three timeline visualizations of playback plans. A user study comparing the timeline designs indicated that different visualizations are preferred for different tasks, making switching among them important. The study also provided insights that will guide research of personalized hypervideo, both inside and outside a meeting context.

Abstract

While synchronous meetings are an important part of collaboration, it is not always possible for all stakeholders to meet at the same time. We created the concept of hypermeetings to support meetings with asynchronous attendance. Hypermeetings consist of a chain of video-recorded meetings with hyperlinks for navigating through the video content. HyperMeeting supports the synchronized viewing of prior meetings during a videoconference. Natural viewing behavior such as pausing generates hyperlinks between the previously recorded meetings and the current video recording. During playback, automatic link-following guided by playback plans present the relevant content to users. Playback plans take into account the user's meeting attendance and viewing history and match them with features such as speaker segmentation. A user study showed that participants found hyperlinks useful but did not always understand where they would take them. The study results provide a good basis for future system improvements.